Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
July 11: “Bored to death. The onset of the night was very slow. Morphine.”
Appalled by the gangrene that was developing in his feet, Lachenal twice begged
his companions to fetch doctors to attend to him. These native physicians were in over
their heads, as they confronted the ravages of frostbite.
The doctor undid my dressing with a great deal of delicacy. He proceeded with much propri-
ety. He sterilized his tools over an alcohol flame. He seemed a bit frightened, he didn't know
what he ought to do, so he asked me. . . . In the end, he was content with covering my feet
with gauze soaked in Mercurochrome and wrapping them back up again.
By July 12, on learning that the flight home was to be delayed another day, Lachenal
had reached the ragged end of his patience. “Does Momo think of no one but himself?”
he raged in his diary.
Finally, after the return of the Kathmandu party, Lachenal consented to one more
treatment by Oudot, who amputated his last toes. “I suffered horribly. He gave me
an intravenous shot of morphine, which did me little good. . . . At each attack of the
scissors, the scalpel, the lancet, my big toe jumped. For me this was a huge disappoint-
ment, for I had truly believed I could keep part [of my toes].”
“Will I still be able to ski properly?” Lachenal wondered in his diary on July 15.
“Tomorrow is the departure toward my wife.”
At last the 16th arrived. The men boarded the airplane, then whiled away the hours
of the endless flight. Just before landing at Orly the next day, Lachenal and Herzog put
fresh dressings on their wounds.
Their reception on arrival was more tumultuous than anyone had predicted. Before
a wildly cheering throng, Herzog was hoisted first off the airplane, his feet and hands
covered with enormous bandages. Rébuffat followed, then Couzy, then Terray, car-
rying Lachenal in his arms like a child. Reporters swarmed around the worn-out
climbers, demanding at once the whole story of Annapurna. Herzog's mother, father,
and siblings embraced him. Adéle took Lachenal's head in her hands and kissed him,
tears streaming down her face.
For the French, still sunk in the humiliation of World War II, the conquest of the
first 8,000-meter peak ever climbed became at once a matter of incalculable national
pride. Indeed, it could be argued that no triumph of sport in the nation's history ever
meant so much to its people. Nor was the glory to be short-lived. Fifty years later, An-
napurna still occupies a sovereign place in the French soul.
For Herzog, the ordeal of recovery had just begun. Annapurna ends with the arrival
at Orly, with Herzog's ringing envoi: “There are other Annapurnas in the lives of
men.” The most moving passages in L'Autre Annapurna concern the author's con-
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